Sarah Sonn

You're waiting for that call.

You know, we hear about the call all the time.

And I'm really going to explain the process from the organ donation side, which is what LifeSource, the process that LifeSource manages.

So LifeSource is the only one allowed to do this work in our region.

We have partnerships with all hospitals across the three states that we serve.

So hospitals, once they've done everything possible to save a patient's life, but the patient dies,

has experienced a non-survival injury, then they call us and they share some information about the patient and LifeSource evaluates that patient to see if they might have the opportunity to donate and help others and save lives.

One person can save up to eight lives through organ donation and then hundreds after that through tissue donation and bone and other things like that.

So the process then begins of life source evaluating the patient.

If there is donation potential or we think there might be, we meet with the family.

Either we let the family know that their loved one has checked that box and has chosen to be a donor and wants to save lives, or if they haven't, then we talk to the family and give them the information that they need to make the decision about whether their loved one will go on to save lives.

Um, after that step, then we start, um, the, the matching process and the medical evaluation looking for, um, we run, run the match list, um, for each organ to see who meets the criteria.

It might be someone local.

It could be someone, you know, in another part of the country, there's a host of criteria that we're looking at.

Um, once matches are made, uh, then we coordinate with the surgeons who will come and recover the organs, um,

And then we support the family through this process and in the months and years to come after that.

So we support the family with information about who their loved ones saved.

We host a lot of events to honor donors.

We've got a beautiful wall here at our office in North Minneapolis.

So we're really with these families every step of the way supporting them.